The neural underpinning of religious beliefs: Evidence from brain lesions

Cristofori, Irène; Cohen-Zimerman, Shira; Bulbulia, Joseph; Gordon, Barry; Grafman, Jordan

doi:10.3389/fnbeh.2022.977600

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 39 publications

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“…Third, traumatic lesions in the prefrontal cortex altered the affected patients' "personal relations with God" (Cohen-Zimerman et al, 2020;Cristofori et al, 2022).…”

Section: Brain Circuitry For Sensing Godmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Cosmological Neuroscientific Definition of God

Ludvig¹

2023

OJPP

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The main objective of this work was to produce a scientifically reasonable definition of God. The rationale was to generate a definition for filling a small part of the spiritual vacuum of the 21 st century and thus initiate a new understanding of the Intelligence that permeates the cosmos with mystery, love, order, direction and morals. This resulted in the following definition: "God may be a-humanly incomprehensible-eternal cosmic existence, intimately related to the endlessness of space, to the nature of the deepest common substance of matter and energy, to this common substance's unceasing motion responsible for time, and to the basic laws of their allness, letting love transform this allness to an ordered Multiverse with a Soul: the-scientifically approachable-Soul of Multiverse inspired to guard these laws and equip their order with direction and morals while imbuing the cosmos with the potential of lives evolving, at the right spatial and temporal distances, to embrace the sense of the divine, thus justifying the existence of God." The likely neural circuitry for sensing God in the human brain was identified as a network for spiritual data flow across the conscious and subconscious layers of the association cortical cognitive system exchanging data with the prefrontal cortical Self-Ken and modulated by inputs from the emotional and motivational systems of the brain. To study this mental process, the design of a God-Experience Monitor was also developed: a comfortably wearable combination of EEG and audiovisual-recorders tailored to at least partially capture the individual experiences of God anytime and at the very "genius loci" of such experiences.

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“…Third, traumatic lesions in the prefrontal cortex altered the affected patients' "personal relations with God" (Cohen-Zimerman et al, 2020;Cristofori et al, 2022).…”

Section: Brain Circuitry For Sensing Godmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Cosmological Neuroscientific Definition of God

Ludvig¹

2023

OJPP

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Advances in brain and religion studies: a review and synthesis of recent representative studies

McNamara,

Grafman

2024

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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We review and synthesize recent religion and brain studies and find that at a broad network neuroscience level, religious/spiritual experiences (RSEs) appear to depend crucially upon interactions between the default mode network (DMN), the frontoparietal network (FPN), and the salience network (SN). We see this general result as broadly consistent with Menon’s et al. “Triple Network or Tripartite Model” (TPM) of neuropsychiatric function/dysfunction. A TPM cycling model is here offered to account for details of neural bases of an array of RSE phenomena including ecstatic seizures, neuroimaging of religious participants, psychedelically induced mystical states and perceptions of supernatural agents. To adequately account for SA perceptions, however, recent evidence suggests that REM sleep and dreaming mechanisms likely play a role. Future research should examine neurodevelopmental mechanisms of acquired SA perceptions as well as societal-level effects such as brain mediated religious beliefs of in-group cohesion and out-group hostility.

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The neural underpinning of religious beliefs: Evidence from brain lesions

Cited by 2 publications

References 39 publications

A Cosmological Neuroscientific Definition of God

A Cosmological Neuroscientific Definition of God

Advances in brain and religion studies: a review and synthesis of recent representative studies

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